This story starts with us driving 900 miles to southern Alabama, where my wife Janet’s parents live.

On Thanksgiving Day, final feast preparations were under control in the kitchen, and I was on the couch in the early afternoon watching TV.

Rats. I noticed a slight disturbance in my vision, sort of like a kaleidoscope. This has happened to me every so often for 30 years, and it’s an early warning system that says a migraine is coming.

The headaches were bad news when I first began to have them, but they’re no big deal these days. Just inconvenient.

Usually, I grab some Advil or Tylenol and go on with life. But it can reduce the symptoms if I close my eyes for a while, so I leaned back on the couch and gave that a try.

I awoke to Janet in front of me asking if I was OK, with one of our sons behind her talking on the phone to a hospital.

They’d been trying to wake me up with no luck. They shook me. No response. My youngest son says he punched me hard on the arm, and he’s ripped. No response.

So, when I finally opened my eyes, the family was not exactly panicked, but very concerned. DefCon3, let’s say.

When I said that I was nauseous, we went to DefCon4. As soon as I could break away from the toilet, they gave me a bucket and drove me to the emergency room.

After that, I only have a few glimpses.

I know I mentioned migraine at some point.

I know that they gave me a common anti-nausea drug.

And I know it completely freaked out my body. For the next three hours at least, my wife waged a battle to keep me on the bed, assisted by my son and also a security guard they enlisted from out front.

Janet says I couldn’t sit still. I kept repeating that I had to go, leave me alone, stop touching me, get me out of here, and a hundred other nonsensical demands and threats. I ripped out the IV and tangled the electrocardiogram leads as I thrashed about.

The staff gave my skull both an MRI and a CT scan to be sure nothing was going on in there. Nothing noteworthy was, but I thrashed on despite a couple doses of strong sedative.

Basically, the diagnosis was that I fainted as a result of a migraine.

And finally, Janet says, the reaction wound down. We’d been in the ER for four hours.

I have a vague memory of a guy pushing me out in a wheelchair and helping me into my inlaws’ car.

Janet put me to bed. I woke up Friday morning, 12 hours later, without a clue what had happened.

OK, I had one clue. A dozen EKG leads were stuck to my body in assorted sizes and places; I lost a good bit of body hair ripping them all off that morning. Plus, my left bicep is still sore from the IV jabs.

All in all, based on what I actually remember, it was not a bad Thanksgiving.